Decking It.

So we have this awesome deck, with super awesome potential.  But with great potential comes great cost.  So we made do with what we have.  I'm a big barefoot person.  I purposely walk around the block barefoot so I can get my feet ready for summer.  Tender feet are the pits.  But splinters...those are even worse.  Especially with poor Aiko runs around on the deck, trips and then has 30 splinters in her feet and up her leg.  

It's a big deck.  We knew it would be too expensive to replace all the boards (which it could really use.) So we looked into repainting it. 

Before-ish  (Because we ALWAYS forget to take before.)

Wait, What?!  I actually did take some photos...or steal them from the MLS, I honestly don't know. 

Can you just feel the splinters?!

It's like that barefoot dancing commercial you see from Behr, their advertisement worked so dang well! Except Behr's was too expensive.  We ended up buying Rust-Oleum's Restore from Home Depot.

There was a 4x and 10x thickness.  We chose to use the 4x and purchased the 4 gallon.   I know, we chose the most boring color ever, but while we were at the store we only saw 4 samples.  Little did we know you could actual choose like 50 different colors, after we had the paint lady start tinting.  Le Sigh

We did power wash the deck before.  Surprisingly, it rolled on very easy and quickly.  While putting on the first coat I noticed some dark clouds looming over.  Of course.  It had to rain.  So we had to wait another day for the deck to dry out again.

Aiko watching her dad work.  Apparently, his waving was hysterical.

We did the deck in a couple different steps.  First we power washed, then we painted 2 coats on the boards.  Surprisingly, it rolled on very easily and quickly.  We did have to change rollers quite a few times and don't even try cleaning them out.  We left the posts and railings until we could agree on a color. The husband wanted to keep the redwood color above, but I don't care for it, like a lot.

In the end, the husband found the stain we'd used on our wood floors.  Here.  So instead, they ended up being a dark brown.   I thought we could work as a team to stain the deck, but in the end, I had a super crappy brush and a not so good attitude, so the husband ended up staining everything while I did who knows what.  (Like care for the children.)

After, he painted the railings with the same coating as the main part of the deck.  You guys, It looks awesome.  No more splinters in Aiko's legs, we can walk barefoot, I can lay on it.

It's amazing.  

Here's a few pictures of our days on the deck.

The only downside, is that the painted deck gets SUPER hot.  So we always lay down a blanket or wear shoes until it cools of. 

Every morning the babies are stripped down to their diapers and we go get some sun.  Aiko and I lay on our backs (little brother is happily kicking) and I point things out in the sky to her.  Planes, (current favorite) clouds and everything else are all so lovely from our deck.